For Richard Lapointe, Challenge Now Is Finding Place To Live

Richard Lapointe's mental handicap sometimes leaves him unable to grasp his legal situation. But when the state Supreme Court concluded in March that he had been unjustly convicted of murder, leading to his release from prison after 26 years, he knew he had a new problem.

"I have to find a place to live," he said during a conversation in prison four days before his release. With all the naiveté that characterizes his cognitive impairment, and with no idea where he would live or what would happen to him when he got out, he said, "The neighbors might find out who I am. I know I'm an innocent man."

A dedicated group of supporters and their lawyers got Lapointe out, beating long odds by proving the 69-year old dishwasher was wrongly convicted and assuring him of at least some years of freedom at the end of his life. Two months later, the Friends of Richard Lapointe face an unexpected new challenge: making sure the happy but bewildered man they freed doesn't become homeless.

He would be homeless now, were it not for the Friends, many of whom have grown old with Lapointe. He has no money, no possessions, no relative willing to support him. He will have difficulty caring for himself. He is hard of hearing and has trouble with balance. Liability questions connected to his criminal case cause lawyers to wave red flags wherever he goes. And he seems, at least preliminarily, not to fit into the byzantine rules regulating government housing subsidies for the disabled, the indigent or those unfortunate to be both.

In prison, Lapointe had a degree of security, protected by inmates and guards who believe him incapable of the horrific murder with which he is accused — the rape, stabbing and strangulation in 1987 of his then-wife's grandmother. Concern that Lapointe might, in some fashion, have been better off locked up contributed recently to an email from a frustrated Kate Germond, who is director of Centurion Ministries, the non-profit group whose lawyers persuaded the Supreme Court that Lapointe deserves a new trial.

"It seems he 'falls between the cracks,'" Germond wrote. "He's too poor. He's not slow enough. His case is not settled. I understand very much the case not settled part, but where in the hell is he supposed to go? If not for the Friends, he'd be homeless or still in prison. Really Connecticut? It's making me nuts."

Before he was arrested in 1989, Lapointe could have expected a modestly comfortable retirement, supported by Social Security and family. He lived with his handicapped wife and their son. They had a home in Manchester. He worked as dishwasher in a restaurant. The couple had the support of relatives, who lived in nearby.

That life ended with his arrest and conviction. Supporters say the prosecution probably was the result of Lapointe's Dandy Walker syndrome, a hereditary condition that causes abnormal brain development. It has inhibited Lapointe's coordination, speech, memory and ability to think in the abstract. Friends say it made him absurdly gullible and susceptible to suggestion. His lawyers argue that it caused him to confess to a crime he did not commit.

The confession is at odds with details from the crime scene. At one point, Lapointe told the Manchester police detectives investigating the death of the victim, Bernice Martin, "If the evidence shows that I was there, and that I killed her, then I killed her, but I don't remember being there."

The Supreme Court was critical of the interrogation, but reversed the conviction because Lapointe's prosecutors failed to turn over to his lawyer police notes that supported his alibi defense.

Since his release April 10, Lapointe has been unable to shake some prison habits. He stops at doors, as if waiting for a prison guard to permit him to pass through. When he is required to appear at the courthouse, he is convinced he is returning to prison.

He moved in temporarily with a young family in the Hartford area, and he jumps from his chair after meals to clear the table, which was a job he said he had in prison.

"I help clean up after chow," Lapointe said.

The couple volunteered to take Lapointe for a month or so, while the Friends arranged long-term housing. That has proven to be more difficult than expected, those working on Lapointe's behalf said. The young couple, who the Friends are not identifying, agreed to extend their offer to Lapointe but will be unable to do so indefinitely.

Pat Beeman, a Friend who is working on housing for Lapointe, said his supporters would like to find a place where he would have companionship, because he is very social. He also will need supervision. His condition has made him forgetful. He likes to take walks but is susceptible to falls. He recently sprained a wrist in a spill while getting into bed.

"The reality is, if you put the issue of who Richard is aside, just the disability issue itself in housing is incredible," Beeman said. "There isn't any. There just is not enough affordable, accessible housing for people with disabilities."

One private agency agreed to house Lapointe in a group setting, but wanted more than $200,000 a year, Beeman said.

The state Department of Social Services, which subsidizes the care and housing by private agencies for the aged or disabled, will not discuss Lapointe's options without a waiver from Lapointe or his representatives. But department spokesman David Dearborn said Lapointe's representatives should be able to meet with agency staff to avert what the Friend's fear could be a housing crisis.

Lapointe's need for supervision appears to be less an impediment to finding housing than what Beeman referred to as "the legal thing" — the fact that Lapointe is facing an open murder charge because the state could decide to retry him. The Supreme Court reversed his conviction but did not acquit him of murder, rape and other charges. If Hartford County State's Attorney Gail Hardy chooses, she can force another trial.

As long as the state has an open charge against Lapointe, liability and insurance issues associated with housing an accused killer in a group setting could be insurmountable, his supporters said.

A decision on a retrial could take time. Assistant State's Attorney David Zagaja said in court late last month that prosecutors want to assemble all the evidence in the Martin killing and perform genetic, or DNA testing — tests that the prosecution has resisted for years.

Over the decade and a-half that Centurion Ministries has represented Lapointe, its lawyers said it has performed and paid for most, if not all, the DNA testing in the case. Centurion, which exists on charitable contributions, is an organization that describes itself as dedicated to exonerating wrongly convicted prisoners. Lapointe would be its 54th.

None of the DNA results analyzed to date have tied Lapointe to the crime, but neither have they tended to exonerate him by implicating someone else. The new round of DNA testing, by the state at the state police forensic laboratory in Meriden, was scheduled to begin earlier this month.

"The state's position has changed," Zagaja said in court. The state now is deciding how to proceed in the case, he said. Before, he said, the state was trying to maintain a conviction.

Lapointe, meanwhile, appears happily oblivious.

Centurion Ministries had a party in New Jersey in May to celebrate the retirement of its founder, Jim McCloskey. The Superior Court allowed Lapointe to attend, with all the other exonerees, and Germond said he stole the show, dancing almost every dance.

Back home, he has been given a walker and a cane but is afraid they may impede his ability to get around to help the seniors at the center where he spends most of his time.

"He loves to go for walks but can't go alone," Germond said. "He is extremely helpful — he leaps up from the table to do the dishes. He helps in the garden."

His friends hope he can continue to do so.

"I guess he could end up in a nursing home," Beeman said, "but the point is you want to enrich his life, because now for 26 years he hasn't had any kind of enriched life. That's what we want to do. We want to give him a quality of life that he was robbed of."